Two weeks in the West

A Wasatch Powderbird Guides helicopter drops skiers in the
Utah high country

PHOTO COURTESY WASATCH POWDERBIRD GUIDES

Updated 2/4/2008

A groan must have risen from some Western developers at
the end of last year, as a flurry of conservation easements yanked
hundreds of thousands of acres out of their reach. The
rush was at least partly due to a federal tax incentive that
expired at the end of 2007. (Congress is considering an extension.)

Landowners from Tucson to Missoula gave up development
rights in favor of preserving their properties for agriculture,
wildlife and open space. Some of the notable deals made around the
region in December and January: In Montana, federal dollars will
purchase easements on about 7,800 acres in the Blackfoot Basin. The
easements are the latest success of the Blackfoot Community
Project, which aims to conserve about 89,000 acres of former Plum
Creek Timber Company property.

California,
already a leader in easements, gained even more protected land. The
families of high-tech moguls Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard donated
development rights on the San Felipe Ranch - roughly 28,000 acres,
the size of the city of San Francisco. It joins more than 400,000
already-preserved acres east of San Jose, around Mount Hamilton.

Also in California, a 190-acre historic farm in Pescadero
will grow pumpkins and Brussels sprouts instead of condos, while
3,200 acres west of Gonzales, near Highway 101, will remain a
working ranch. In Paso Robles, the 150-acre Turley Vineyard joins a
"purple belt" meant to preserve wine country. And Humboldt County
investors and conservation groups are working on an epic easement
that would manage 197,000 acres of redwood forests for timber and
put aside another 12,000 acres for marbled murrelets and tailed
frogs.

In Arizona, The Nature Conservancy bought the last
big chunk of private land - 312 acres - along the Upper Verde
River. The landowners also donated easements on another 2,600 acres
upland. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve, slated to cover 36,400 acres
near metropolitan Scottsdale, inched closer to its goal with a new
10-acre easement.

In southern Colorado, a 1,600-acre
easement in Rio Grande County will protect more than two miles of
the banks of the Rio Grande. In San Miguel County, 640- and
400-acre easements preserve ranchland and shelter the imperiled
Gunnison sage grouse and Canada lynx.

To ease more
landowners into easements, the Idaho Legislature is expected to
again consider a tax-break bill that would give ranchers and
timberland owners a state income tax credit equal to half the
appraised value of the lands they protect. Colorado, one of the
only Western states that offers tax credits for easements, acted to
reduce abuses of its system with tighter standards and reporting
requirements that went into effect Jan. 1.

On
other fronts, powderhounds - motorized and non-motorized - have
been interacting with wildlife, sometimes for good, and sometimes
not. Wasatch Powderbird Guides faced down an enviro
lawsuit that claimed the company's helicopters and
avalanche-control bombs shatter the silence and scare wildlife in
national forests outside Salt Lake City; a federal judge allowed
the heli-skiing business to continue. Several hundred miles east, a
Forest Service study shows that backcountry skiers and snowmobilers
on Colorado's Vail Pass are crowding out threatened Canada lynx. On
the other hand, in southern Colorado, 250 volunteer sledheads and
two-plankers rallied to bring feed to thousands of starving deer,
trapped by deep snow and severe cold in the Gunnison Basin.

A bit more good news - maybe. A ceasefire in the
Klamath Basin, home to one of the West's fiercest water wars, once
seemed as likely as peace in the Middle East. But a new
billion-dollar agreement, hammered out by a consortium of tribes,
fishermen, conservation groups, irrigators and government agencies,
might be the equivalent of a plan for sharing Jerusalem. The deal
would knock down four dams, restore salmon populations, let farmers
irrigate, and provide cheap power. The struggles on the Klamath,
which straddles the Oregon-California border, have lasted for more
than a decade, producing furious farmers, huge fish kills and angry
anglers. California's Hoopa Valley Tribe and some environmental
groups say the consensus deal still diverts too much water to
farmers. And the dam removal, which could begin as early as 2015
and would be the largest ever in the nation, depends on an
agreement with dam owner PacifiCorp and half a billion dollars in
federal funding.